


The Soldier, the Owl, and the Cursed Forest

by Psijay



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, M/M, except it's a made up fairy tale, heavily implied reaper76 but you can read it as gen if you want
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2017-10-22
Packaged: 2019-01-21 14:17:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12459525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Psijay/pseuds/Psijay
Summary: Everyone knows to stay away from the forest, but perhaps it's not as dangerous as it seems.





	The Soldier, the Owl, and the Cursed Forest

**Author's Note:**

> I've been participating in the Inktober OTP challenge over on [my tumblr](http://psijay.tumblr.com), and the prompt for the 21st was 'Fairy Tale AU'... and I do not know that much about any fairy tales, so I just made up a new one!

The prince had been warned to stay away from the forest. ‘ _You’ll get lost in there_ ,’ his parents told him, ‘ _and you might not find your way home_ ’. But when his parents saw evil coming, they told him to run, and ‘lost’ sounded better than ‘dead’. He fled into the dense forest. He ran until he could no longer hear the crackling of the flames licking at the walls of the palace. He ran until he couldn’t run any further. And then he fell to his knees, dehydrated and starving, and passed out.   
  
He awoke with a jolt, shocked into wakefulness by a powerful presence. A woman stood over him, frowning and fretting. She seemed slightly younger than the prince, with blond hair that shone like a halo under the sunlight filtering through the leaves. He knew without asking that she was a witch. She radiated power.   
  
“Help,” he croaked out, voice weak. “Please.”   
  
She nodded. “I will,” she promised. Her voice carried an accent he couldn’t place. “I can transform you into something more at home in these woods. A charm that will wear off when you no longer need it.”   
  
“Please,” he said again.   
  
The witch began to speak in hushed tones, and his consciousness faded.   


* * *

 

 

The soldiers had been warned to stay away from the forest. ‘ _Something lives there_ ,’ they’d been told, ‘ _something cursed_ ’. But as he watched his fellow soldiers cut down one by one until he was the last one left, ‘cursed’ sounded better than ‘dead’. By the time he made it past the treeline, he’d already all but bled out. Between the slashes across his face and the wounds around his abdomen, he hadn't expected to make it as far as he did. He staggered into the darkness, breath coming in harsh gasps, before collapsing against the massive trunk of a crumbling tree. The last thing he saw as his vision faded was a pair of red-amber eyes, blinking in the void.   
  
He awoke slowly, to the sensation of water against his skin. It dripped onto his chin in a steady rhythm. He screwed up his face, pried his eyes open. He was no longer propped against the tree trunk. Instead, he lay flat on his back in a patch of moss. Dew dripped from the leaves above him. When he tilted his head and opened his mouth (wincing as it agitated the slash across his lips), he could collect enough water to soothe his dry throat. In the branches above, beyond his field of vision, he could just hear the soft call of a bird, melodic in a haunting sort of way.   
  
After a few more swallows of dew, he gathered his strength and propped himself up on his elbows. Immediately, every muscle and nerve in his body lit up in pain, and he gritted his teeth to stifle his cry as he crumpled back to the ground. In the trees, wings fluttered, but the soldier hardly noticed, eyes clenched shut and fingers dug hard into the moss beneath him. For a few moments, he only lied there, trying to regain his breath, until something rustled beside him. He froze, slowly opened his eyes.   
  
A barn owl leaned over his face, head tilting back and forth, huge amber eyes fixed on his own. He gasped and flinched away, doing his best to ignore his protesting muscles. The owl only cooed softly and hopped to follow him. It’s eyes, eerily emotive, darted around his face almost anxiously. It gently nudged his face to the side with its beak, then fluttered over to his other side to tip his face in the opposite direction. The soldier watched it warily, but let it go about its business, unsure what else he could do. The owl made a low noise, before taking off.   
  
Odd, the soldier thought, but at least it hadn’t pecked his eyes out. He took a look around his surroundings. Green surrounded him on all sides, from the light filtering down through the leaves, to the lichen on the tree trunks, down to the moss and grass sprinkled over the ground. Was this really the same forest he’d taken refuge in? While his senses had been fairly dulled when he stumbled into the trees (and his memory of his desperate search for safety dulled even more), he certainly felt like it had been more foreboding earlier. He could hardly imagine this being the lair of some great evil.   
  
Before he could muse any further, the barn owl landed beside him, a branch much too big for it clutched in its beak. It dropped the branch within easy reaching distance, before launching into the skies again. A good look at the branch revealed several bright red fruits (apples, if he had to guess) hidden in the leaves. The soldier frowned. Was the owl… trying to _feed_ him? How could an owl know what humans ate? For that matter, how did a barn owl, a creature preying mainly on small animals, know that apples were edible at all?   
  
The bird returned shortly thereafter, this time with a plant. Aloe, he recognized, as the owl snapped it in half and very, very carefully, pressed it against the largest wound on his face. He held still, more out of shock than courtesy. The owl was dressing his wounds.   
  
How—   
  
Why—   
  
…   
  
_What?_   
  
Clearly, he had died from his wounds, and this was some… very confusing form of the afterlife. He wracked his mind, but that was the only reasonable answer he could come up with. After that point, he stopped trying to analyze the owl’s actions.   
  
Somehow, the soldier began to heal. Over the course of a few weeks, the owl helped nurse him back to health. It brought him what food it could find (only fruits and berries in the beginning, then small birds and rodents once he was well enough to make a fire pit), directed him to clean water, and fetched aloe and other ingredients for healing salves. Eventually, the soldier stopped wondering how the owl knew so much, and simply accepted that it wasn’t an average owl. He didn’t know exactly what it was, but he was grateful all the same. He thanked it for every gift, and let it perch on his shoulder when it needed to rest. That seemed to be enough.   
  
Eventually, he left the forest, the owl following him from the skies as he trekked to his old base. Everything was gone. The base itself, the people who worked there, even the town that had been nearby, had disappeared. He couldn’t even find the bodies of the soldiers that had fallen in the battle that nearly took his life.   
  
“What happened?” he wondered aloud, voice shaking. The owl landed on his shoulder, preened his hair to calm him. “We… we lost,” he whispered, falling to his knees. “They took everything.”   
  
The owl nuzzled his cheek, cooing sympathetically. _It’s all right_ , it seemed to say, _I’m still here_ . He scooped it off his shoulder, cradled it carefully to his chest. It snuggled in close, stretching to tuck its face against his neck. _I’m here for you_ .   
  
“Thank you,” he murmured into its feathers. “I don’t know what you are. I don’t know why you’re helping me. But I’m so glad I’m not alone.”   
  
The owl didn’t respond, except to cuddle closer.   
  
The two returned to the forest, to the shelter the soldier had built. The soldier got a fire started, and the owl brought a hearty dinner of several mice and a whole rabbit. The soldier got to work preparing the meal, cleaning up the meat with his old combat knife, flinging the scraps over to his companion, who delighted in snatching them out of the air. Their nightly routine.   
  
“I really do appreciate you,” the soldier said as he went about preparing his meal. “I don’t know how I could ever repay you, or if I even could.” He sighed, before continuing his soliloquy. “I don’t know how I could’ve survived without your help. I don’t think I would’ve wanted to. What kind of life would that be, alone and isolated in a cursed forest?” He shook his head. “I mean, obviously I’ve lost my mind. I’m talking to an owl, after all. But I truly believe I would’ve given up a long time ago if you weren’t around.”   
  
He looked up to find the owl staring up at him, those emotive eyes wide. Its gaze captured him, so soulful and… caring, somehow. Its dark eyes were so human at times, it almost startled him.   
  
“I couldn’t ask for a better companion,” the soldier finally said, hoping the owl could understand the sincerity in his voice.   
  
He smiled, before turning his attention back to his food, but as soon as his gaze shifted, a flash of light flooded his peripheral vision. He turned back, shielding his eyes against the glow. It surged and grew until its luminosity peaked, then faded back down, into the shape of a man. The soldier scrubbed at his eyes, blinking haloes from his vision, and when it finally cleared, a man sat hunched before him.   
  
The man gasped for breath, chest heaving as he sat up, blinking deep amber eyes. The soldier could only watch, slack-jawed, as the man recovered. With dark, warm skin, and tousled, curly hair, the man would’ve caught the soldier’s attention even if he _hadn’t_ literally been the first human he’d seen in months. Small scars split the skin of his face, on his cheeks, his forehead, his nose; marks of a life of struggle and triumph. A neat mustache and goatee framed his mouth, the hair not quite thick enough to hide his strong jawline. The soldier couldn’t take his eyes off him.   
  
“Thank you,” the man finally breathed, eyes lighting up as they fell on the soldier.   
  
The soldier’s mouth closed and opened silently as he searched for words. Finally he managed to choke out, “Are you the…”   
  
“The owl, yes,” the man said, smiling just enough to crinkle the skin around his eyes. “I wasn’t originally an owl, but I think you’ve already realized that.”   
  
The soldier nodded slowly. “So, who were you, before you were an owl?”   
  
The man’s smile faltered. “I was a prince. A long, long time ago. But my kingdom is long gone. Now, I suppose I am just Gabriel.”   
  
“Gabriel,” the soldier repeated. He held out a hand. “I’m Jack.”   
  
Gabriel’s smile returned as they shared a firm handshake. “It’s a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance, Jack.”   
  
Later, after Jack finished preparing their food, the conversation continued.   
  
“So, how did you become an owl?” Jack asked.   
  
“My kingdom had been usurped. My parents had been taken prisoner, and my only chance at survival was to hide in the forest,” he explained, gaze distant. “When I collapsed from exhaustion, a witch found me. She told me she could make me into something at home in the forest, and that the charm would wear off when I no longer needed it.”   
  
Jack leaned in, rapt. “‘When you no longer needed it’? What did that mean?”   
  
Gabriel shrugged. “I thought it would wear off once the kingdom had forgotten me. But reign after reign passed and I remained an owl. I learned my way around the forest, and all its secrets, and still I remained an owl. I helped those who got lost among the trees, still as an owl. Until you.” He ran his fingers through his goatee thoughtfully. “I suppose, I no longer needed the charm because I was no longer alone.”   
  
They shared a look, heavy with meaning and emotion, and knew they didn’t have to put words to their thoughts. They understood. The meal continued in easy silence, the two comfortable in the proximity and basking in the heat of the fire. They leaned together, shoulders brushing.   
  
Their pasts were distant, their futures uncertain, but they were no longer alone. And that was enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in two hours and gave it a light round of editing, go easy on me lmao.


End file.
